Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Play Log: Happy 2017?

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations
Started and finished the first case.  So far, so good.  It's just as good as I remember.

Shadowverse
I'm finally starting to come into some decks I can have a bit of confidence in.  Though right now this game's meta is pretty frustrating.  It feels like almost every player I run into these days is playing Bloodcraft or Shadowcraft, and it's getting really old, really fast.  That said, there are some interesting Forestcraft and Dragoncraft decks coming up too.  And we can't forget the all-powerful Dimensional Shift Runecraft deck.  With a bang and a boom!

Tiny Rails
This is one of those "games" where once you get up and running, you basically only boot it up a couple times a day to check in on it and spend any accumulated resources.  I like it well enough, though.

Super Toss the Turtle
Apparently this is a souped up version of an old Newgrounds flash game.  When I saw it, it instantly reminded me of this browser game I once played on Cartoon Network's website.  Basically, you have a cannon or catapult of some kind, and a hapless animal, and the goal is to launch it as far as you possibly can, using the environment and a limited amount of manual nudges.  This one's extra silly.  My poor turtle got shoryuken'd by a walking banana, suicide bombed by a Mad Max-style biplane, and had the stuffing kicked out of it by Super Saiyan Goku.

Cowboy Bebop
I've seen more than my share of anime, but this has long been one of the gaps in my completion list.  Don't get me wrong, I've seen Cowboy Bebop.  But only what episodes I would sometimes catch on Adult Swim back when I was a kid.  I've never done a proper, continuous viewing of the series.  Anyone who's even dabbled in anime will have heard plenty of praise for this show, as it's widely considered to be not only one of the greatest series of all time, but a very good gateway into the medium.  It's not uncommon for products to buckle under such prestigious reputations, but from what I've seen so far Cowboy Bebop really does earn every ounce of praise.  I'm only a handful of episodes in and it's already one of the most charming, engaging shows I've ever seen.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
I powered through all of season two a week or so ago.  I'm still not sure what my overall opinion of IBO is.  There are things I think it does better than most other shows in the franchise, there are things that I think it does well, and there are things I think it does poorly.  For example, the action is top notch.  Or more specifically, the choreography is top notch.  The animation, however, often looks cheap.  The music is also great, and I really like the character dynamics.  Yet at the same time, I find it difficult to even remember many of the characters' names, even as I enjoy watching them interact.  The show does dialogue and interaction well, but the characters themselves aren't very interesting individuals, with some exceptions.  I also am still not really taking to the show's mechanical design.  The only suite I really like so far is Vidar.  Barbatos is cool, but that has more to do with it having a lot of cool scenes rather than it being a particularly cool MS, at least to me.

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